Freeing up federal
lands
By Chris
Cannon
Tucked away on page 328 of President Bush's 2006 budget
proposal is an initiative to review federal lands in the District of Columbia
to determine whether any would be better utilized by the District. This is a
welcome development in a city whose growth has been stunted by a wide-ranging
federal presence. I applaud the president for initiating an inventory of
surplus federal land to be taken over by the District or the private sector.
Especially in the private sector, such real estate can produce jobs and
generate tax revenues for the District.
But the inventory should not
stop at the District's borders. The same federal land inventory is needed
nationwide.
The federal government owns more than
670 million acres, almost one-third of the land in the America. What is not
known is whether that land is being put to its best use. In September 2003, the
General Services Administration identified more than 5.1 million acres of
federal land as "vacant" with no federal purpose. The Bureau of Land Management
alone has more than 3 million acres that have been identified as surplus and
suitable for disposal. Furthermore, the General Accountability Office has found
that the federal government owns hundreds of thousands of real property assets
worth hundreds of billions of dollars which are no longer consistent with
agency missions and are no longer needed. Many of those assets are in an
alarming state of neglect and disrepair. GAO also found that little is known
about this property.
Federal ownership often
carries unintended consequences. For example, in the District, where 26.3
percent of the total acreage is owned by the federal government, the District
loses an estimated $400 million to $1.1 billion a year in tax revenue. While
that is significant, I ask D.C. dwellers to imagine the revenues being lost in
my home state of Utah, where 66.5 percent of the land is federally owned. In
fact, there are 12 Western states that rank above the District in federal land
ownership, and they are losing billions in potential tax revenue each year. The
enormous economic burden on local governments throughout the West is
unbearable.
To make up for the shortfall, the
federal government is supposed to compensate nearly 1,900 local governments in
49 states, including the District, under the Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILT)
program. This funding helps pay for essential services such as environmental
compliance, law enforcement, health care, education, firefighting and
search-and-rescue operations. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the
program's importance and strong bipartisan support, PILT payments persistently
fall substantially short of the amount that would be generated if the same
lands were privately held and on county tax rolls, and far short of the costs
those lands impose on local governments.
This
year's budget proposal is no exception. The PILT request is for only $200
million, a $26 million cut from last year's appropriated level and $150 million
less than full funding. By not adequately funding PILT, the federal government
forces citizens in public-lands states to pay more in local property taxes than
other Americans.
The president should ensure that
the federal land inventory he ordered last year is completed and that ownership
of surplus and under-utilized land is transferred to the states. This will
bolster Western economies by giving them more tax revenue and job-creation
opportunities. In the meantime, the president should support a fully funded
PILT program, so that rural communities can begin to support the services for
which they rely on these payments.
The
Congressional Western Caucus, an organization of nearly 60 members of Congress
from the West, recognizes the need to sustain a vibrant Western economy for
present and future generations. We applaud the president for his approach in
the District of Columbia and urge him to consider the same for us out in the
West.
Rep. Chris
Cannon, Utah Republican, is chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus.
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